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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Yes, I’m doing the word ply this
week. I like what I did with the title, because not only is plyers a homophone
for pliers, a real word, the suffix -er means a person/thing that has to do with something,
like laborer to labor. Get it? Funny, right? Hello? Guys?

Ply

Ply has three main definitions, work
with or at (ply a trade), bend or fold, and a layer of something. The first two
showed up in the late fourteenth century are closely related, although in kind of a weird way. “Work with” ply is
actually short for another word, applien,
which was really used in English at one time. And yes, it sounds a lot like
apply, but applien doesn’t come from apply, except in the sense that they both
come from the classical Latinplicare, fold,
and also where the other ply comes from. The third ply showed up in the mid
sixteenth century, coming from the Middle Frenchpli, a fold, and Old Frenchploi, layer. It also comes from plicare because of that whole fold/bend
thing.

Apply

Note that this is not something
that seems like apples. That would be appley. Apply showed up in the late fourteenth century,
coming from the Old French aploiier,
same meaning, and the classical Latin applicare,
to connect. Plicare, fold, is the root word here, with the prefix a- (or ad-),
meaning to or towards.
Apply has a lot of different meanings today. You apply for a job. You apply
ointment to the affected area. But originally, it meant to put yourself at work
towards a task, and a figurative definition of being in contact (i.e. ointment
to skin). Interestingly enough, job apply only showed up in the eighteen
fifties, although it’s quite similar to the original definition of apply. Well,
I think it’s interesting.

Imply

Showed up in the late fourteenth century,
where it meant enfold or entangle. Seriously. It comes from the Old French emplier and classical Latin implicare, involve. The enfold
definition makes sense since plicare means fold and in- means, well, in.
Like apply, it just went off in a completely new direction. Latin meant
enfolding in the figurative sense, so enfolding in an event (or whatever) would
be involving. English kind of took it from there.

Reply

Reply showed up in the late fourteenth century with the same definition. It comes from the Old French replier, Late Latinreplicare. The re- prefix means back, and with
plicare, to fold, it means to fold back again. Like all the other words here,
its meaning comes from the figurative use of the word.

Comply

Comply showed up in the early
fourteenth century, where it meant fulfill or carry out, like one would an
order (at least getting to the definition of agreement makes sense from there).
Comply was compli in Old French (same
definition) and in Vulgar Latin it was complire and classical Latin complere. Notice there’s not a plicare
in there? That’s because although comply may have been influenced by ply, it
actually comes from complete. Despite what it looks like, it’s not a ply word! It’s actually made up by the
prefix com-,
with or together, and plere, fulfill.

Supply

Supply just happens to be in the
same boat as comply. It’s not from plicare but plere,
being a combination of sub- (from below) and plere, fulfill. To fulfill from below. I’m going to guess that’s figurative.
Oh, and it showed up in the fourteenth century.

TL;DR: There are two origin
words for -ply words because we dropped the c from one of them.

Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Or, Things I Can’t Believe I
Messed Up While Writing, OMG, I’m So Embarrassed.

1. I forget words kind of a lot.
Well, it’s every few pages, which seems like a lot to me.

2. No matter how many times I
went through my MS, my beta readers will still find grammatical errors. I’m
sure it happens to everyone, but man, I felt like I was new at the whole
putting words on paper thing.

3. “Accidently” is a word
somehow. (My reaction can best be summed up as o__O) And of course I used it.
This is why you need beta readers. Because Word has some messed up excuses for words
in its dictionary.

4. My favorite way to emphasize
something, besides using adverbs, is by saying “managed to”. I could get away
with that phrasing once, maybe twice, but any more and it becomes one of those
bumps that knocks the reader out of the story.

Seriously, I wanted to crawl
into a hole of shame after this. I should get more people to proofread because I
do not trust myself after this.

So now we’re at the point where
I turn things over to you. What’s your most embarrassing mistake? Anyone ever heard of “accidently”?

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Rest! It’s a word that’s also part of arrest, and interest,
and wrest is probably involved in some way. We also have forest, but since rest
is not actually a suffix in that word, it doesn’t count here.

Rest

Rest has two main definitions, one meaning sleeping or taking
a break, the other a synonym for remaining. Sleep rest comes from the Old Englishraeste which could mean rest like we know
it, bed, or mental calm. It’s prevalent across many Germanic languages, but it’s
origins from there are a mystery. However, its Old High German equivalent is rasta, which meant both
rest as we know it and “league of miles”, so apparently it also had something
to do with distance. What that signifies is anyone’s guess.

There’s also the other rest, the remaining one, if you will.
It comes from the Old Frenchrester, to remain, and the classical Latinrestare,
stand back or be left. The re is actually the prefix re-, which means back in
this case.
-Stare means to stand,
which survives somewhat in the word stet.
The reason these two definitions have the same spelling? Coincidence, plain and
simple.

Wrest

We don’t use wrest much these days. It’s frequentative,
wrestle, is far more common. Wrest comes from the Old English wraestlan,
where it meant twist or wrench, and the Proto Germanicwraistijanan, a version of the word wrig/wreik, to turn. The idea of
removing or detaching didn’t show up until the early fourteenth century, while
removing by force showed up in the early fifteenth century. It has absolutely
nothing to do with any version of the word rest. I’m just posting about it to
fill up space.

Arrest

Arrest showed up in the late fourteenth century, coming from
the Old French arester, to stop, and
Vulgar Latinarrestare. The prefix ar- is a variation
of ad-, which means to or at.
The suffix is of course restare, which gave us the remain behind rest, so it’s
the verb of to stay behind (writing “to to stay behind” is kind of weird).
Basically, it’s making someone stay behind.

Interest

Interest as we know it showed up in the early seventeenth century,
but it came from an earlier word from the mid fifteenth century that meant a benefit
or a legal claim. Interest comes from the Anglo Frenchinteresse, legal concern, which
itself comes from the Medieval Latininteresse, compensation of loss. See the
evolution? Compensation to legal concerns to benefit. But what’s interesting
(ahem) is that interesse comes from the classical Latin interesse, which means…interest.
It went from the definition we know it as to something different and then by
the time it was finally translated into English, it started to go back to the
old meaning. You can’t see it, but I’m rolling my eyes right now. Anyway,
interesse is a mix of words, in this case inter-, between,
and -esse, which means to be.
The T is just something we English speakers slapped onto it.

TL;DR: One definition of rest is related to arrest. Any
other word with rest in it is just coincidence.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

The most dreaded word in a writer’s vocabulary. Except maybe
for pitch. But it’s definitely above query.

The thing about a synopsis is, it can’t just be a
play-by-play of the book, because that would be boring. It has to be as interesting
as your writing so any potential readers will know why the book is slap-across-the-face
awesome. I’m…I’m not sure where I was going with that.

Type “writing a synopsis for a novel” in your search engine,
and you’ll get twenty five million results (give or take a million). Most of
the ones I’ve read give guidelines along the lines of “Who is the main character?”
or “Describe what forces your main character to change.” Yes, they expect us to
come up with something interesting with dull prompts like that. I wonder how
they’d react if I said “I force the main character to change by writing the
novel.”

Probably like this.

And then we have the ones that advise going through the
novel, writing down everything important that happens, and turning that into a
synopsis. It sounds like good advice, but in practice, not so useful because
then you have a bunch of sentences and no idea how to connect them into a
coherent, engaging piece of writing.

Okay, so the guidelines are as useful as someone slamming
you upside the head with a wooden board. No fear. There actually are some good
ones out there. Susan Dennard did an amazing article on synopses at Publishing Crawl. First she gives some
basic info, then some reminders about what is especially needed for a synopsis
(only three named characters, tell the ending), then she gives an actual
example of how to write one. She uses Star Wars as her basis, making it easy to
follow since pretty much everyone has seen that movie. Instead of frustrating,
impossible to define questions, she asks for fill in the blanks for things like
“Protagonist Intro” and “Winning seems imminent, but…”. In short, it’s not what
people want. It’s how to do it.

Anyway, if you want to know how to do a synopsis, go here.
The other important piece of advice I remember (though I don’t remember where I
got it from): get beta readers for your synopsis, too. From people who haven’t read your book, so you know if
it’s enticing and informative.

That’s all the wisdom* I have. What are your thoughts on
synopses? Any advice?

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Do any of you remember thoseposts I
did about preparations for the Rapture? It was in 2011 after that guy was
talking about how the world was going to end in May although I don’t think it
did. I suppose it’s possible we’re all hallucinating this at the same time.
Really, it would explain a lot.

Anyway, I (just) got to thinking about making that a regular
thing, maybe a completely separate blog about survival guides for various
apocalyptic scenarios. For example, there’s been a zombie outbreak. While the
general wisdom is to shoot them in the head, who’s to say that would work? It
didn’t in Return of the Living Dead.

Plus, there are other possible apocalypses. What if there’s
a robot rising? What do you do (get lots and lots of magnetic strips)? What don’t you do (time travel and mess causality
up so much no one can keep it straight)? Let’s not forget a possible The Stand-like contagion, or invading
aliens (you really shouldn’t trust germs to kill them seeing how they evolved
on a completely different planet and Earth bacteria would have no effect on
them). People could be dying out there without any survival guides for these
scenarios.

What do you guys think? Do you have any other apocalyptic scenarios?
What apocalyptic books/movies/television shows do you know about?

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Because I finished with all the days of the week, now I’m
going to start months and I wanted to do at least one during the same month it
was in. Does that sentence make sense? I think my mind’s all drifty.

Believe it or not, English had another name for the first
month: geola se aefterra.
That aefterra looks like after for a reason.
The literal translation of the phrase is later (or after) Yule and it seems to
have been interchangeable with January.
As always when it comes to different versions of words, one is preferred and
the other lost to history.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Could it be? COLLAPSE has been
outlined, edited for repetition/unnecessary words, read aloud and read by beta
readers. I have got two different versions of a query, a synopsis, and I’ve edited them all twice. This is as good as it’s going to get. I think.

I always get nervous when I
finish a book, because I know there is nothing left to do but query, and that
makes me want to curl into a ball and rock back and forth murmuring nonsense. I
believe in my book. I think it’s good. But as to whether it’s good enough…

Let’s just say self-confidence
isn’t my strong suit.

I’ve submitted other books and,
sadly, all have been rejected. But I felt equally as proud of them and believed
in each one just as much as the last. I’d like to say this one is better
because I worked a lot harder on
editing, but…well, it’s that self-confidence thing again. What do I do if no
one likes it? Do I write something else or keep editing? Is it my writing style
or my story or my characters or the query or my everything?

Yes, I work myself up into a
nice little panic. It never stops me from trying, though.

I better go edit my query again.

Do any of you have any good query stories and/or advice for querying? Want to beta read a query for me? What about you self-pub people? Any thoughts on going the Indie route?

Saturday, January 11, 2014

You all know I’m a connoisseur of spam (and a little off
topic, why is connoisseur so freaking hard to spell??). It’s insane, badly
translated, nonsensical garbage and I can’t resist it. But did you know that
Twitter has its own special brand of spam-sanity that’s as rich and tasty as
what you delete from your blog comments on a weekly basis? Just look at some of
the gems that have followed me:

Bio: “Successful Internet Marketer.”

Reality: Has fewer followers than me. Hasn’t tweeted in a
month.

Bio: “Hello I am a network marketing coach who trains others
on how to build there own blogging site and market themselves as an expert in
there niche.”

Thursday, January 9, 2014

First etymology post of the year! Whoo! And it’s going to be
a long one!

This time, I decided to look spectacle and all related words
(there are a lot!). It showed up in the mid fourteenth century meaning a specially prepared display. It comes from the Old Frenchspectacle and classical Latinspectaculum, both with roughly the
same meaning we know it as. Words with -spect in them generally have something
to do with watching because the suffix, like spectaculum, comes from the Latin spectare/specere, to look or watch. It can be traced even further back to
the Proto Indo Europeanspek, to observe.

Now for the suffixed words…

Inspect

Showed up in the early seventeenth century (making it one of the later ones) from the classical Latin inspectus/inspicere,
to look into. The prefix in- means into, and with specere meaning look, it’s
kind of easy to see how the word works.

Aspect

Showed up in the late fourteenth century as an astrological
term, believe it or not, referring to the positions of the other planets as
they look from Earth.
It comes from the classical Latin aspectus/aspicere,
to look at. The a- prefix is the at part,
of course.

Respect

This one might seem a little weird since respect doesn’t
really require looking. At least, not these days, as originally it meant regard
or a relationship. It showed up as a noun in the late fourteenth century and a
verb in the mid sixteenth century.
The noun is from the Old French respect
and classical Latin respectus/respicere,
which means to look back at (makes sense since the re- prefix means back or again),
but unlike the noun, the verb respect comes from Middle French.
The word there is respecter, to look
back, and it comes from the Latin respectere,
another word that comes from respicere. The only difference is that respectere
is what’s known as a frequentative, which is a special verb that indicates an action is ongoing or repetitive.
Why they needed a different form of the verb to make a word that was basically
the same, I have no idea.

Expect

It may not have an s, but it is a -spect word. Expect showed
up in the mid sixteenth century meaning, get this, to wait to act. It came from
the classical Latin expectare/exspectare
(the s does seem redundant after the x), which meant to wait or look out for. The ex- prefix normally means out or from,
but in this case it means completely, which is a legitimate meaning, I swear. I
guess the idea of completely looking for something can mean that you’re waiting
for it to show up. Maybe.

First showed up in the early seventeenth century as a regard or reference to something. It came from the classical Latin retrospectum/retrospicere, to look back.
It’s a combination of -spect (look) and retro- (back), which itself is a combination of re- and intro-. And that’s your cool bit of knowledge for the day.

Showed up in the early fifteenth century meaning looking off into the distance, I’m not even kidding. It comes from the
classical Latin prosepectus/prospicere,
where it means to look far away or to look forward. Pro- brings the forward and the spect- brings the look, making a word that was once literal and now is
just figurative.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

I think this year, when I forget to write 2014 instead of
2013, it’s going to be because I’m still in denial about it.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

Anyway, what should I accomplish this year?

1. Get my newest book, REMEMBER, to the point where it can
be beta read.

It’s still
pretty rough right now (the first draft still isn’t done), so it will take a
lot of work to get it there.

2. Start working on a (gulp) query for COLLAPSE.

I have a
few rough copies, but I doubt any would entice readers. Ooh, this is the most
terrifying goal.

3. Try to find some way to post my progress on my goals,
both yearly and monthly.

I’d like to
see how I’m doing and whether I need to work harder.

4. Read more dystopian/apocalyptic/paranormal YA.

For, you
know, research. This is probably going to be an easy goal.

5. Think of ways to make my blog posts more interesting.

And implement
them. That last “Informal Poll” thing was a huge bust. I have some other ideas
in mind, but who knows if they’ll be successful.

6. Try to start a movement to simplify the English language.

Seriously,
is the letter C really necessary? And don’t say we need it for the “ch” sound.
We can use Q for that and not for “kw”, which is weird anyway. Every other use
of C can be replaced with K or S. I’m also not a fan of using G for the “juh”
sound, but one thing at a time.

7. Get over my doubts about selling an apocalyptic story in
a glutted YA market and just DO IT.